


Stray

by echoist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-08
Updated: 2010-05-08
Packaged: 2017-10-09 08:50:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoist/pseuds/echoist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel finds a curious kitten.  A gift for <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/Shirozora">Shirozora</a>, who drew <a href="http://shirozora.dreamwidth.org/98822.html?#cutid1">the art that inspired it</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stray

                “Dean,” the angel asked, standing up from a crouch at the side of the road.  “What do I _do_ with this?”  The small tabby cradled in his hands gave a plaintive meow at being elevated without warning.

                Dean closed the Impala’s hood, wiping his hands on a filthy scrap of cloth before tucking it away.  “It’s a cat, doofus,” he replied with a chuckle.  “You put it down and let it wander back to wherever it came from.  They can take care of themselves.” 

                “Why is it – _mewling _at me?”  Castiel asked, tilting his head to regard the little beast securely tucked between his palm and the front of his shirt.  “What does it want, Dean?”

                “It likes you, Cas!” Sam chimed in, returning from the convenience store with fresh coffee and – if he knew what was good for him, Dean thought, some cherry pie.  He tossed the plastic bag in the passenger seat and nearly jumped the Impala to reach the angel and his newfound friend.  The kitten recoiled with a hiss as Sam extended a hand, digging sharp, tiny claws into the angel’s skin. 

                “Ow,” Castiel said, curiously, looking down at the creature in surprise.  “Is it supposed to do that?”

                “No –“ Sam denied, perplexed, just as Dean answered, “Yep.  Now put it down, Caesar, and get back in the car.  Time’s a wastin’.”

                “Caesar’s the dog guy,” Sam corrected, making another attempt to pet the kitten.  It swiped a paw at his fingers, then sank needle-sharp teeth into the flesh of his thumb.  “Jesus Ch—er, yeowch!  Dammit.”  He shook his hand to free it from the kitten’s rather tenacious grip and glanced guiltily up at the angel when it yowled.  Castiel’s brow wrinkled in concern. 

                “Seriously?”  Dean scoffed from behind the open driver’s side door, one arm resting on the window.  “Did you just get pwned by a kitten?”  Sam glared at his brother, wrinkling his nose as he wiped small beads of blood away against his jeans.  The kitten, grey-black fur ruffled and electric, began a perilous climb up the angel’s trench coat.  Castiel stroked it with a bemused expression, fingers scratching behind ears much too large for its head.

                “What did it do that for?”  Sam muttered, his tone threatening to break into a whine at any moment.  Castiel raised his head and fixed Sam with a knowing stare that sent him staggering back a pace.  His heels struck the Impala’s front tire and he stilled, glance flickering back and forth between the feline and the angel. 

                “Yeah,” he said under his breath.  “Sure.”  Watching the flush rise in his brother’s cheeks, Dean slammed the door and crossed the uneven concrete, aiming to remove the small, furry obstacle preventing them from getting the damn show on the road.  The kitten scrabbled for shelter as he reached a hand around its midsection and detached it from Castiel’s wide lapel, yowling piteously at the affront.  He caught Sam’s resentful glare out of the corner of his eye as he walked to the edge of the pavement and tossed the cat into the underbrush.  He’d made it halfway back to the car before a grey streak shot silently past his legs and barreled beneath the Impala.  “Oh, for the love of –“ 

                “Here, kitty kitty...”

                Dean stopped, watching his brother crouch on the asphalt, ass tilted obscenely up into the air as he stuck his face – his _face – _under the car.  Some people, he thought, were born with all the common sense God gave a jar of mayonnaise.  “Sam,” he begged, then again, sharply, “Sammy!”  He winced at the sound of a human skull connecting with the undercarriage.  “We do not have time for this shit,” he reminded the two chuckleheads he seemed to be babysitting.  “In case you’ve forgotten, there’s a net of kelpies two states over stealing children from freaking mudpuddles.”

                Sam scooted back out, rubbing the back of his head, hands and knees coated in a fine layer of grease.  A tiny pink nose jutted out from beside the front left tire, sniffing at the air and Sam stilled.  The rest of the body followed the nose, slinking cautiously out into the midday sun.  Sam slowly extended a hand and the kitten nosed at it briefly before giving his fingers a hesitant lick. 

                Watching his brother’s face light up, Dean half expected a shaft of light to descend from the sky, complete with heavenly voices in accompaniment.  He shook his head to clear it of the disturbing image and scuffed the toe of his boot against the pavement.  He supposed another few minutes of pointless, idiotic dawdling wouldn’t really hurt.  Much.  Only two or three more kids would go missing in the time it took for his brother and the angel to film their after school special.

                Castiel tilted his head, owl-like, regarding the change in the almost apologetic creature, now occupied cleaning the grime from Sam’s fingers with assiduous swipes of its bristly pink tongue. Sam, grinning like a kid at Christmas, wrapped his hands around the kitten’s ears and stroked, amply rewarded by a low and rumbling purr.   




                “Damn if that thing doesn’t sound like a furry little engine,” Dean quipped and the purring ceased, interrupted by a furious yawn.  It shook its head, disentangling itself from the attentive human with a friendly rub about Sam’s ankles, and darted for the shelter of the weed-choked ditch.  Sam’s knees cracked as he rose from his crouch and stretched his arms over his head, still smiling.  “Is the Hallmark moment over?  Can we go now?” Dean asked with mock, movie-of-the-week sincerity.  

                “Fine by me,” Sam agreed.  “Cas, you re –“  The angel’s face had fallen, watching the kitten bound happily away in pursuit of a terrified grasshopper.  Dean turned in time to see it change; the blissful confusion replaced by a subtle and inexplicable loss present in the lines of his face.  Something knotted, hard, in the pit of his stomach and Dean cursed. 

                “I thought,” Castiel began, his words getting lost on their way out past his lips.  “I had thought it might want to stay.”

                “You can’t keep a pet, Cas,” he started in, dragging his heel along a broken line of cement.  “We don’t – we aren’t – “   Dean broke off, wondering why he couldn’t collect his thoughts.  “You can’t just start taking in strays,” he finished angrily.  Castiel’s gaze followed him heavily, dogging his footsteps as he flung open the driver’s side door; he heard an echo of the angel’s thoughts in the crunch of gravel beneath his boots. “We have enough responsibilities as it is,” he answered, turning the key in the ignition and ignoring the look of confusion on Sam’s face as he crossed to the passenger side.   

                “It is not an apt comparison,” the angel said quietly, appearing suddenly in the backseat.  Dean stilled, hand on the gear shift, willing Castiel to leave it alone.  “You are not your brother’s keeper, Dean, anymore than I am yours or you are mine.”  He thought of the tiny cat pressed close to the angel’s chest; the contented sound it gave when Sam scratched behind its ears.




                Sam slid into the passenger seat before Dean could answer, before he could tell the angel _Yes, you are, _or_ Yes, I am, _or maybe both.  He watched his brother scavenge for a cassette out of habit, just a reflex after years of riding shotgun to a tape-deck tyrant and said nothing over the clatter.  Tilting the rearview mirror up too high to see the backseat, Dean pushed the gas pedal to the floor and tore out of the station in a cloud of dust and thunderous noise.

                Left to its own inscrutable devices, the kitten carefully lifted its paw and freed the captive grasshopper.  “Luck’s a funny thing, don’t you think?” said the man now standing knee-deep in the a patch of dry and rustling weeds.  “All the humans in the world, and my long-lost brother found the two most likely to break his bleeding heart wide open.” 

                Unaware that it was being addressed, the grasshopper made haste down the narrow ditch, and wisely; the same half-feral curiosity proved present in both his feline captor and this strange new beast.  Gabriel took several steps across the crumbling, uneven earth before vanishing in the shock of innumerable wings, a quiet chuckle hanging on the breeze the only mark of his brief trespass there.

                “Damn if it isn’t great fun to screw with them in the meantime.” 

 


End file.
